


In other worlds

by skyling



Category: BoJack Horseman
Genre: Addiction, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Recovery, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23339482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyling/pseuds/skyling
Summary: In the planetarium, Sarah Lynn imagines other possibilities.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 44





	In other worlds

**Author's Note:**

> because i appreciate the nuance given to bojack's mental health and recovery but wish it had been possible for sarah lynn* to also make a place in the world.
> 
> *and in general female characters in media dealing with similar issues

Constellations surround her. They shimmer and pulse through the curve of darkness, arc like the spine of some vast cosmic animal. The stars breathe: bright, dim, brighter. She can’t tell if they’re moving closer or farther away. 

She closes her eyes. 

There’s architecture behind the stars, holding them in place. The bolts and beams construct the visible world, the stars she can almost reach out and touch. She can touch them. The space behind them is solid. Wood and steel, perfectly placed to hold up everything behind the scene. 

It’s always calmed her, that solidity. Knowing that whatever happens in a room, the room stays the same. Behind the performance, the actor is flesh and blood. The set design is painted plywood; the mansion is plaster and metal and dead trees.

Whatever happens, the underlying structure remains.

BoJack, her mother, her stepdad. The burn of vodka in her 12-year-old throat, the room spinning. She would reach out, touch the wall, steady herself. 

The room the same. 

Nothing more to it.

Behind the infinite stars and their architecture, more architecture. The world wired into place. Chaos, but chaos bolted down. The raw wood behind it. Sturdy. Logical.

Every structure is repetition and variation, fractals of the same basic patterns, the same unshakable math that shapes how a space can be filled. Behind the artificial stars there’s fake velvet sky, crossbeams and roofbeams, more sky, more stars. Patterns on patterns. Go far enough into all that space, you’ll get more space. Other stars and other planets and other Sarah Lynns. 

In some other world, time moves slower and she’s still 12 years old, drunk off her ass and dancing alone in the kaleidoscope eye of her dressing room. Her blood buzzes, scared-excited as she waits to get caught. 

She doesn’t get caught. Tries to tell herself it’s ‘cause she’s good at hiding and not because no one’s looking. Tries to tell herself she’s getting away with something, that she has hidden herself and her sensations so deeply that now no one can see or take or touch them. She is steel-hard, shining. A star.

But her insides feel empty. The emptiness spins. 

She reaches out to steady herself. 

There’s some planet, some certainty in that infinite possibility between all the nothingness, where it’s three months ago. She’s sober. Well, getting sober. Every pore sweats out chemical dependency, her whole consciousness crowded with the barfy migraine-curdle of a hangover. Her skin is icy inside and burning on the surface, like she’s trying to expel herself from her body. She is a toxin. She wants herself out. 

Her body is a burning building, and she rattles for a fire escape. To drink, to cut, to purge the feeling out of her before she explodes. Her throat is painfully tight; she watches another sunrise climb her bedroom wall like a stain, and her vision is both ashed-out and dizzyingly, brain-stabbingly sharp. Everything is fucking _wrong_. She's wrong. 

She feels like she’ll die. And part of her wants to, but her body won’t let her. She can’t do this. She can’t get out of herself.

After eternity, the wave of pain passes. She takes a deep breath of sweet, stale air. 

Still sober. Still here. She stares at her hand, struggles to process it as hers. Her body.

Her architecture intact. 

In the space between pain, for a moment, she breathes. 

In another world, Sarah Lynn gets everything she wanted. She… oh hell, she falls in love. Only it’s not like the other times she’s been in love. It’s so different that, for months, she doesn’t realize that’s what it is. She wasn’t aware that love could be a comfort, something other than that constant adrenaline rush of needing to put on a performance, that tightness in the chest of dread/hope/gearing-up-for-a-fight as she waits to be caught out as not enough. 

She’s felt love like the thrill of shoplifting, like that brief perfect bliss before drunk turns to blackout. Love like _How far can I push this before I get caught_. Like, _How much need can I show you before it scares you away?_ Like, _How many times can I push you away before I prove I was right that you would leave me._

She’s felt love like screaming meltdowns, like stabbing her stomach while the paparazzi gasps, like _I would rather destroy myself than you leave me_. Maybe that doesn’t mean much, though, coming from someone whose default is trying to destroy herself. But she’s felt love. Or she thought she did. What else could that intensity have been? 

But this is different. In this version of the world, love isn’t like blackout but sobriety. Colours are brighter, not because of a psychedelic haze, but because she’s really _looking_. Because she wants to look. When she laughs, it isn’t bitter or mocking. She’s happy. Being with another person, neither of them using each other to escape their own thoughts. Just being. The impossible miracle of being okay with that. 

And when it hurts, it’s not the pain of cutting or a hangover, but that of withdrawal: a whole-body ache she can learn to sit with, because it matters. 

In another world, Sarah Lynn is an architect. Or she’s going to be. A student poring over textbooks and figures in the university library, slightly regretting the double-shot mocha shaking in her fingertips as she runs calculations for her final project. (There's no world where she doesn't crave intensity.)

She works hard but she procrastinates. (She can’t help but push into the anxiety and excitement, the space between immobilized and motivated.) She’ll turn in these diagrams in the morning, not as perfect as she wants them to be. But she will turn them in. She’ll do well. She’ll prove herself. 

The Sarah Lynn in the library is annoyed with herself. She’s worried she’s not good enough. Sarah Lynn in the planetarium wants to tell her she is, that of course she is. She wants to tell her how proud she is of her. 

Maybe library Sarah Lynn is fresh out of high school. Maybe she was never famous, never special in any way the world could see, but from the planetarium, Sarah Lynn can see it. Or maybe the woman in the library is also in her thirties, the same age as planetarium Sarah Lynn, another washed-up star but one who decided to go back to school and follow her dream. You can do that. 31 isn’t old. It isn’t old at all.

The woman in the library feels her heart hammer in her chest. She criticizes herself for her laziness, but she isn’t lazy. She’s trying. Anyone who really looked would see how hard she’s trying. 

There’s a slight self-indulgence to her anxiety, a tinge of _next time I’ll do better_. But she’s doing fine. She’s doing enough. She’s making something, and it matters to her. She cares, and sometimes it hurts to care. 

From the planetarium, Sarah Lynn wants to shout to her: _you’re happy. You don’t realize it, but you’re happy. Right now. For real._

But the woman doesn’t hear her. She smiles as an equation comes together; her calculator spits out an answer and she lines up her protractor, sketches the support beam carefully into place. 

In the dark arc of the planetarium, Sarah Lynn looks out at the stars. Bright, dim, brighter. She can’t tell if they’re moving closer or farther away.

She closes her eyes.


End file.
